


Love is a Choice I Make with You

by Inofaro



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Dragons, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Not Epilogue Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:02:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24051031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inofaro/pseuds/Inofaro
Summary: By all accounts, Draco Malfoy should be content with his life. A caretaker of the Wizarding Wild’s rarest, most majestic creatures, he begins and ends every day amid effusion, beauty, and a sense of purpose. But still, he wrestles with himself, and walks the world restless.Then, Harry Potter stumbles back into his life, and he’s at a crossroads as well - struggling to convince himself that the life laid out for him is the one he truly wants.When Draco looks at him, he sees himself at sixteen. The same fear, the same despair. The same, iron-stiff conviction that he has no other choice. But now he knows: always, always, he has one.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 7
Kudos: 67





	1. ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome! This fic is completely finished and is comprised of a total of 6 chapters, 16k words. I will be updating Mon/Wed/Fri until the end. 
> 
> There are no major content warnings for this work, though if you are sensitive to themes of grief, maybe give this fic a pass.
> 
> Enjoy!

Despite himself, Draco Malfoy cries when his father dies. 

He receives the news via owl. A note, written in his mother’s shaky hand: _Your father is dead. Come home to discuss the details. -NM_

It isn’t a surprise; no one lives long after being Kissed, and Lucius Malfoy has lived past the average, anyways. Seven years. Draco gets dressed. He doesn’t bother checking himself in the mirror before leaving, he knows what he would see. 

The funeral is private, but that doesn’t stop word from getting out. No one shows up to jeer - after about three years of that, people decided it wasn’t worth the bother anymore. Not like the Malfoys are ever doing anything interesting. 

No, only the press is there, still circling and circling after so many years, never tiring of the chase. They clamor at the cemetery fence, a cacophony of camera shutters, interview requests, and frantic reporting. 

“Ready, Draco?” 

Draco nods. At his signal, his mother flicks her wand and the polished wooden box in front of them floats off the ground, and gently settles into the hole. Another flick, and the pile of soil that lay beside lifts as well, and covers the box - smoothing over until the seam of the hole’s border disappears. 

They stand silent, watching the patch of dirt for a long time. So long that even some of their most vigilant “fans” begin to droop on the other side of the iron bars. 

There is nothing in the box, as is Malfoy family tradition. Everything that once was Lucius Malfoy is now contained in two vials: one in Narcissa’s coat pocket, the other in Draco’s. He fingers it, the glass warm with body heat. 

He is not crying now, and neither is his mother. When they speak to each other, their words are slow and careful, but clear and unwavering.

“Let us go.” A click and a flash go off behind Narcissa. In the darkening air, the sudden light sends shadows sprawling up her face. 

Draco holds out his arm without a word, and his mother takes it. Together, they tear away, carrying the man they loved between them. 

Two weeks later, it’s full-dark when a knock comes on Draco’s door. He sets his journal down and opens the door without looking through the glass. 

“Sorry to bother you.” It’s his supervisor, Amira Felding, robes still as neat as Draco had seen it that morning. “There’s been a changeup. The tour group tomorrow changed their plan to a camping trip last minute. Walker can’t do it - her knee - so it will have to be you.”

“Prasad?”

“They have one scheduled the day after.”

Draco sighs. “How long?”

“A week. Though at this rate, they may as well change that at a moment’s notice, too.” The bitterness hangs from her words. Rare, for her to be so frustrated.

“I’ll start packing.”

“Sorry about this.”

“It’s fine.”

She regards Draco a moment, the light touching her face. “How’s your mother?”

“Well. She’s well.”

“Good. Send her my condolences.”

“I will.”

A pause. With a fluid motion, Amira turns her wheelchair towards the exit. “I’d better let you get to it, then.”

“Yes.”

“Goodnight, Draco. And don’t worry about the paperwork.” She wheels away, and there’s nothing else for Draco to do but close the door.

Sunlight streams in from all sides. The lobby is empty, save for a few dusty couches, the receptionist desk, the temporary receptionist, and Draco. 

They glance up from the desk, peering through each glass wall. “They’re really taking their time, aren’t they?”

Over forty minutes past their scheduled time. His teeth gritted, Draco gets out, “They are.”

“Don’t worry, Draco. Take off your pack already and relax. Might as well.” They shuffle some papers into the file cabinet behind them. “Mint?” They gesture at the bowl full of them. 

“No thanks, Prasad.”

Outside, a wind picks up, its howl audible even inside. Though sunny, the sky is still gray as gravel, and the shrubs and grasses still shriveled and leached of color. Normally, on a day like this, Draco would be out shoveling manure, curing meat, or shoring up on wood. Something to get his hands on the dirt, in water, into something real. 

Instead, he’s here. Waiting on people who, for all he knows, have canceled already.

Just as he has that thought, a Muggle car lumbers over the horizon. 

Draco’s hand goes into his jacket pocket, and he clutches the smooth vial within. Hearing the shuffle of his clothing, Prasad looks up again. “A Muggle vehicle? That’s a first.”

Draco doesn’t respond, just watches as the car crawls closer and closer, enters their circle, and pulls off the side, to a mostly unused parking lot. A few minutes later, he hears the doors slam one after another and men’s voices rise in the air - muffled through the glass. 

Then, they walk into view, strapped up with various packs, one carrying a small cooler. They are so busy laughing and joking among themselves, that they barely look inside the building they’re walking towards, until they enter.

Draco braces himself. 

“Welcome to Snowdonia Dragon Refuge!” Prasad calls, their voice downright saccharine. 

No one answers. No one moves. Prasad looks between them like they’re watching a particularly rousing Quidditch match. 

“Hell, no.” Ron Weasley curses before walking out the doors, and toward the parked car. Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas follow him, calling their friend’s name. 

“Malfoy…?”

“Hello, Potter.”

Harry Potter opens his mouth to say something else, but Neville Longbottom interrupts him: “A-are you here for a tour as well, Malfoy?” 

Draco inclined his head. So that was how they were going to play it.

“I work here. I am going to be your guide.”

Though Longbottom has filled out over the years, now both taller and broader than Draco, it seems old fears die hard. His guts twist when Longbottom practically cowers, and says, “I see.”

Prasad brandishes a clipboard and a quill. “Please, sign in!”

Slowly, Longbottom approaches, takes the board, and begins writing and signing, talking through the logistics with Prasad, who hasn’t faltered for a single moment. 

Harry remains at the entrance, staring at Draco. The latter feels sweat begin to prick at his collar.

Voices float in from the outside - raised voices. Draco is certain the one yelling the most is Weasley, though the individual words cannot breach the walls. 

“All done!” Prasad chirps. “Just remember to try to keep your magic usage to a minimum - the dragons get a little antsy when they see it. And as you already know, Draco here will be your guide for the next seven days. All the safety measures are outlined on page three, but you shouldn’t worry with Draco. He’s very experienced.” They beam at him. Longbottom looks slightly ill.

Draco steps forward, careful to keep his movements slow and deliberate, and holds out his hand. “A pleasure.” They shake. Longbottom’s hand is cold and damp. “We can set out at any time, so let me know when you’re ready. Or if you have any other questions.” 

Longbottom manages a nod. “I’ll go let the others know, then.” He starts back towards the entrance, and, after a brief, hushed conversation with Harry, they two of them leave and go toward the argument outside that hasn’t subsided in the slightest.

Draco feels a headache approaching, like when he stands on the tallest hill and spots the darkening clouds from miles away. Prasad chuckles. “Good luck, Draco.”

“Encouraging.”

“You always get the worst ones, don’t you?”

They only receive visitors sporadically, especially in wintertime, and not all of them are assigned to Draco, but the ones that are...There is a particular campsite that is still uninhabitable. Amira was almost impressed by the level of destruction. 

“Naturally. I suspect Amira has a hand-”

Prasad cuts him off, “I wouldn’t doubt it.” A beat. “Seriously, though, are you going to be okay?”

Draco draws his hands from his pockets and begins rechecking his pack, making sure he’s bringing enough water, food, first aid. “Don’t start now. It doesn’t suit you.”

“I’m actually worried over here.”

He waves a hand. “I will be fine. Though the same could not be said for Weasley.”

They cackle, their somber mood dissipating as fast as it had come. “The look on his face!” With that, they go back to their paperwork and administrative duties, muttering under their breath with a wide smile still plastered on their face.

The group reappears, walking sullenly from the side of the building. Weasley is redder than usual, but isn’t shouting anymore. Harry locks eyes with Draco through the glass, sending his heart tumbling. 

They enter, and step inside. “I think we’re ready to go now, Malfoy,” Longbottom calls. Weasley, Finnigan, and Thomas avoid eye contact. Harry’s gaze is starting to feel like a brand, searing Draco’s skin. 

He could play this game. Draco fancies he could even play it well. And they were on his home turf, now. He hoists his pack higher on his back. “Good. Follow me.”


	2. TWO

The group is quiet as they begin the hike, which leaves Draco no other choice but to fill up the empty space by himself. He introduces the Refuge to them, their history, their mission: _Caretakers of the Wizarding Wild,_ he says. _Stewards of the most endemic, endangered dragon species in the world._

“What does ‘endemic’ mean?” Longbottom asks, walking beside him. 

“Good question,” Draco replies, “It very basically means their bloodlines diverged from mainland dragons thousands of years ago, and now they are unique, existing nowhere else in the world.”

Longbottom bobs his head, looking back out at the view: the mountains tall and jutting, the valleys dizzying. Over the edge of the path they walk is a steep drop, leading to a river, curving around a distant hill and out of sight. The sun has begun its fall, though its light remains strong. Something calls across the valley, its echo lonely and small.

“Do you worry about attacks at all?”

“No. Dragons are not, by nature, violent creatures.”

“But…” Longbottom trails off. 

Draco knows what he is thinking of. “The Tri-Wizard Tournament? The dragons they carried in for that were deliberately agitated. Under ordinary circumstances, they would not have paid us humans any mind at all.”

“That’s really interesting.”

“It is,” Draco says, pleased, “I thought so, too, when I first learned.”

A few minutes pass with only the crunch of their boots on dirt and gravel for conversation. Then, Longbottom asks, “How did you get into this line of work, Malfoy?”

Draco tightens his grip on the straps of his pack. “A whim.”

“A whim?”

“Yes.” He points into the valley, where, a little ways away, sits a small huddle of black-roofed cottages. “That is our destination. We should reach it by sundown.” 

Longbottom doesn’t press the matter further, and the rest of the group barely get out a grunt of recognition at Draco’s words. Draco decides to spread his remaining material over the next - _Merlin_ \- week, so they walk without uttering a single word to each other for the rest of the way.

Just as Draco predicted, they reach the cottages just as the sun is slipping into the mountain’s pocket and casting the sky in orange and the hills in gold. 

A sigh of relief from Thomas, “Thank the Lord.” He sets down the cooler he’s been carrying by hand. 

In front of them lies the campsite: three squat cottages, a firepit, and an outhouse. “ _An Authentic Muggle Experience!”_ their brochures promise. This is their deliverable. 

“This will be our campsite for the next week.” Draco gestures to the middle cottage. “I will be staying there, and the other two have three beds each - however you would like to split yourselves. Get settled, and in an hour, meet back out here for supper. Let me know if you have any questions.” With that, Draco retires to his cottage and begins unpacking. 

All three are nearly identical - the middle one simply has two less beds. The interior is simple in each: dark wood paneling and white carpet, photographs of Snowdonia hung on the walls and thick rugs underfoot. Each opens to a living space, a half kitchen, and a bedroom. The porch in the back overlooks the wide-flung wild behind, its brush and tall grass and sweeping backs of mountains in the far distance. 

Draco settles in, as he has so many times before. He takes out the cooking supplies and the ingredients. He places the vial on the bed stand. He regards it for a moment, then turns and goes to start on the cooking.

Supper passes uneventfully, and without much conversation. Longbottom tries valiantly to buoy his group’s mood and appetite, to no avail. Weasley still looks as though he’d swallowed a slug. Thomas and Finnigan are trying their best to pretend as though Draco doesn’t exist. And Harry. Harry is still staring - a little subtler than before, but staring nonetheless. 

Afterwards, the group of men quickly make their excuses and retire early: Thomas and Finnigan into the left cottage, and Longbottom and Weasley into the right. Only Harry remains.

Draco watches the flames. It’s dark now. In the summer months, all the croaking, squeaking creatures would be emerging and singing their songs, but it’s still winter, and the night air is cold and silent save for the crack of the fire and Draco’s own heartbeat - a living thing in his chest.

“It’s nice out.” Draco half-jumps at Harry’s words. 

“It is.”

“A bit nippy, though.”

“Getting warmer.”

Harry breathes out slowly and looks to the sky. The stars have come out. “It must be nice in the summer.”

Summer in Snowdonia is green, lush as this far north can allow. The skies are light and the dragons play in the clouds up high, their tails whipping and wings snapping. The ravens make their nests in the birch forests, and the otters build their homes on the tributaries. When it rains, the foxes go to their holes and the wild owls burrow into their hollows, and the only sound across the valley and mountain sides is the _shush shush_ of water on grass, water on rock, water on the snaking rivers. In the summer, Draco sits on the hillsides and lets the world crowd in. 

“Summer is our peak time.”

Harry, sounding abashed, says, “We didn’t really think about it when we booked the trip. The wedding just happened to be scheduled for the spring.”

“Oh. I see.” Draco pauses. “I owe them a ‘congratulations,’ I suppose.”

Harry gives him a quizzical look. “Uh…”

“Yes?”

“I mean _my_ wedding. With Ginny.”

Draco feels as though all the breath’s been pushed out of him. “I-I thought...Thomas and-”

“Oh!” Harry grimaces. “Sorry, should have clarified. They got married last fall, remem-” He stops himself, and the rest of his sentence swings free. 

Draco watches Harry watch him. He hasn’t changed all that much in the years since the War. Same tangled hair, crooked glasses. Same deft hands. Same eyes, the green pinning Draco down as it always has. 

Looking at him is like looking at memory. 

“Well. I will give that ‘congratulations’ to you, then.” Draco pauses. “Are you still hungry?” He asks, nodding to his bag. 

“I-no. No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Sparks spray from the fire.

“What are you doing here, Malfoy?”

Draco’s fingers twitch in his pocket out of habit, but of course he leaves it when he needs it the most. “I’m working, Potter.”

“But you don’t have to.”

Everyone knows the Malfoy vaults were emptied after the War. Apparently, Harry was too busy courting Ginerva Weasley to read the tabloids. Draco tries to control his breathing.

“I want to.”

“You hated Care of Magical Creatures.”

“If you remember,” Draco seethes, “I had other priorities back then.”

“Like being a Death Eater.”

And there it is. Their wands, in the open at last. 

“Yes. Like being a Death Eater.”

The look Harry throws at him. Like suddenly, he realizes he’s been feeding a snake. “Ron was right. Glad to know you’ll always be a prick.” He rises from the stone seat and trudges off into the darkness. The slam of the cottage door sends Draco’s heart skittering.

But the fire burns on, shooting sparks like stars. 

When the men stumble out of their cottages the next morning, bleary eyed and hands up to shield from the rising light, Draco is already packed and scanning the horizon. A V of geese slash through the low-lying clouds, and the sun has begun to lift the dewdrops to its embrace. _A storm,_ he thinks, _a few days out._

The first rain of the year portends fresh growth, snowmelt flushing the streams, and all manner of creatures - magical and not - poking their heads from their burrows.

Draco remembers learning about hibernation as a child, from his mother at bedtime. He remembers asking: _When do they wake up?_

Narcissa smiled, her blonde hair falling all around her as she leaned over him. The light spilling from the hall barely reached them. _When spring comes, of course._

_But when is that?_

_It is when it is._

Draco frowned. _So how do they know? The bears? How do they decide to wake up?_

His mother had responded, he was sure of it, but he no longer remembers what exactly she said. It doesn’t matter now. Because now, he understands.

“U-um, Malfoy?” 

Draco turns. It’s Longbottom. “Yes?”

“Where to, today?”

“North. Toward Glyder Fawr. Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes, we have.” Longbottom gives him a smile, slightly more genuine than the ones yesterday. “Shall we?” 

They set off.

The atmosphere is slightly more relaxed today, with some light conversation happening between the men behind Draco. Harry, he notices, doesn’t contribute much. Longbottom, once again, walks beside him at the front, asking him questions about the flora and fauna around them, and about the geography of the land.

“The place you mentioned earlier, what is that?”

“Glyder Fawr. The fifth highest mountain peak in Wales - to Muggles, at least. You will see when we arrive, it will be worth the effort.” 

It’s Draco’s favorite hike. At Glyder Fawr, the earth is carved deep, and the mountains are pushed high. A product of millions of years of tension and grinding rock, but still the range is calm on the surface. 

Then, Longbottom asks him a question regarding the wild grass bordering their trail, and their conversation carries them. Without prompting, Longbottom shares that he is an Herbology professor at Hogwarts now, and he takes special interest in flora native to the Isles, aiming to research some particularly rare species. Draco entertains him, and before long the sun is high, and they’ve reached the foot of the mountain. 

They have lunch, and then begin their climb. 

It’s hard work, and before long, everyone except for Draco is breathing heavy, their footsteps slowing and their hands scrambling for the water they packed. They follow a haphazard stone path, the moss and lichen like a carpet underfoot. A few birds call, the wind plays through the grass, but otherwise the valley is still quiet with winter.

Huffing and red-faced, Longbottom pierces the silence, “A-are we really going to the peak? It seems like...like a long ways away.” 

It’s true; looming before them, utterly out of reach, was an impossibly tall jut of rock, scraping the sky. Draco has never reached the top before, he doesn’t even know how long it would truly take. But he never needs to, and he never should.

“We are not. We will stop at the next rise and have supper, before turning back.”

Hours fly, and the sun slides down, down, down, until it kisses the earth once more. They arrive at a small plateau, the grass here wild and thick, and settle in - the group of men visibly relieved.

Once they gather their breath and quench their thirst, Draco watches them begin to take notice of their surroundings. Their eyes trace the sloping mountainside, to their unattainable culmination. Then, they slip down, and follow the range as it rises and falls, curves and straightens. They suspect nothing, Draco knows this. No one ever does.

“This is as far as we will go,” Draco says, during a lull in the group’s conversation. “It is as far as we are allowed, by Glyder Fawr and the others.”

He savors their looks of confusion. It has always been his favorite part: the drawing back of the curtain. 

“Gentlemen, you are seated on the arm of the most ancient dragon of the Isles: Glyder Fawr, the Greatest Ancestor, the Eternal Dreamer.”

Longbottom gapes. Thomas and Finnigan swivel around, checking the ground at their feet. Weasley looks to the peak with his brow drawn. Harry looks straight on, unfazed, at Draco. 

“There’s no way…” Longbottom trails off. 

Thomas and Finnigan draw in a breath, and Draco knows that they’ve fit the pieces together at last: the flat stones laid in neat patterns, the range tapering into a tail in the distance, the arching, impossible peak, horn-like. 

“Yes, Glyder Fawr is the forebearer of all the dragons in Snowdonia. And she has been sleeping for a millennia.”

“Wh-when is she going to wake up?” Thomas asks, seemingly so stunned that he forgets who he is speaking to. 

Draco smiles. They always ask the same question, he always gives the same answer. “She wakes when she wakes.”

The men sit in their awe for a long time. Watching the bruising sky, pointing to the hashed lines of exposed rock - so clear to them, now, that they are scars of long settled battles. They ask Draco if the other mountains are dragons, as well. He says: _Not all, but most._ He points to each and names them, calling their lineage into the waking air once more: _Harn Fawr, Pen Sayth, Neidr Arian._ He draws their history, their ancient rivalries and epic battles, their clashes with wizardkind; each claw and fang and tearing howl. They crowd forth with their questions. Draco answers all. Surrounded by behemoths and a staggering, untouchable history, every guest Draco has led to this location becomes childlike in their wonder. Their bodies shrink, but their eyes grow with firelight. Curiosity, so often pushed down in their adulthood, rises again like sparks in the dark air. 

Draco was wrong. _This_ is his favorite part: reenacting the story and drinking in his audience. 

He regards the group of men before him, the people he grew up with, the people who despised him for half a decade. He watches them smile at him and he speaks with them easily. And all the while, memories of their hatred, of _his_ hatred, layer over his vision like ice.

But resentment is familiar, and it enfolds Draco’s heart easily. 

The true horror comes when, spreading like a second skin, his old, old fantasies live again. The yearning he’d felt daily, hearing their laughter tables away, watching them walk the grounds together from a window up high. His shameful desire, the endless _what if_ s. The hundreds of nights he lay awake - before, during, and after the War - conjuring Madame Malkin’s once more, the memory like a blade held to his skin. 

Something claws up Draco’s throat and makes its nest there, refusing to be swallowed back down. He accidentally meets Harry’s eyes across the flames, and the momentary touch stings him. 

Draco steels himself. He still has a job to do. 

Several more hours it takes, to make the journey back. Now that they know what is possible in Snowdonia, the men watch the shapes in the dark more closely, as if convinced that, at any moment, those slitted eyes that have not moved in hundreds of years will slide open and pierce the night. Draco was like that in the early days, too. Half-afraid, half-hopeful, scanning each mountain face and fancying himself worthy enough to witness the waking of these creatures who have never woken for anyone before.

Now, he walks on, his eyes focused on where his feet touch the rocks, and the stars wheeling above. 

Longbottom practically faints at the sight of their camp. Already half-asleep on their feet, Weasley, Thomas, Finnigan file inside their respective cottages, and Longbottom follows close behind - but not before throwing Draco a quick, “Thank you for today, Malfoy.”

Harry makes to walk after Longbottom, but he hesitates at the door and looks back at Draco, standing next to the firepit and watching him. Harry opens his mouth, closes it. Then, he disappears through the doorway.

Draco tilts his head back. 

He is tired, too.

When he wakes, the world is still steeped in darkness. It isn’t a nightmare that has woken him, but something else, for once. Voices, outside, toward the back of the cottage. Draco turns his back to the sound, trying to chase his lost fatigue, but the conversation comes through, clear as the night sky.

“Everyone does this, Harry.”

“Not like _this._ ”

“Not true. You remember _my_ bachelor’s trip-”

“Sure, you were nervous, but you were still _sure._ ”

“No, I wasn’t.”

The voice takes on an edge, “Be honest, Ron. Would you _really_ have called it off?”

A pause. “My point is that this is normal.”

“When did you get over it?”

The answer is immediate: “At the altar. Seeing her walk up.”

Harry sighs. “That’s what I’m dreading the most.”

“...I don’t know what to tell you, mate.”

“It’s okay,” he says, the defeat drenching his voice. “You should go back, it’s cold out.”

Another pause. “Fine.” Gravel crunches and there’s a _shush_ of fabric. “Don’t stay out too late.” 

“I won’t.”

“‘Night.” Footsteps trudge off.

Draco waits, but Harry doesn’t leave. He doesn’t seem to be moving at all.

He tries to go back to sleep, he really does, but the thought that Harry is somewhere on the other side of the wall, breathing and awake at the exact same time, jolts his body with energy. 

Outside, the moon shows its face to Harry. Its light creeps through Draco’s window and touches him too, a silver afterthought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading :)


	3. THREE

Two days pass, and Snowdonia thaws a little, at their feet. Draco leads the group panting up hills, scrambling down valleys, and wading through streams. They catch fish, they climb the scraggly trees, and they laugh at each other among the branches.

The men thaw, too. Draco teaches them how wizardkind used to walk with dragons, and how dragonkind taught their ancestors numerology and a crude form of alchemy. How wizard tongues used to know the sounds of Draconic, but, with generations and generations of strife, the muscles have atrophied, and the knowledge lives in them no longer.

Now, when Draco speaks, the men turn their faces and crowd close, like cubs to their mother's warmth. Thomas shows an interest in history. Finnigan asks often about the particulars of dragon caretaking. Longbottom, naturally, is fascinated by the plants native to Snowdonia that, according to the legends, mark the footsteps of the most ancient dragons. Weasley wonders about the possibility of reviving the cross-species friendship, and of wizardkind taking flight once more. But when he turns to remark on that one time in Gringotts with his best friend, the conversation dies. 

Harry doesn’t speak much and is even less inclined to laughter. As the days pass, the colour in his face drains paler and paler. His cheeks grow gaunt, and the shadows deepen. 

He looks like he hasn’t slept.

Draco knows he hasn’t slept.

Because for three nights now, including the first, Draco has lain awake as Harry and Weasley have the same argument outside his cottage. On the second and third night, Draco instinctively threw silencing charms at his wall and tunneled back into his covers, but sleep never came easy after that. Because he knew, and that knowing was enough.

The fourth day of the trip, Draco runs them ragged, showing them the steepest slopes and most difficult hikes, hoping pure exhaustion manages to deter Harry and Weasley, but that night, his eyes once again fly open to the deep purple of the dark and murmuring voices out back. 

Draco clenches his jaw. He flings back the covers, grabs his coat, stamps across the cottage, and throws the back-porch door open. By the light creeping out from behind him, he sees a figure - just one - sitting a little ways off in the distance. It turns and faces him.

“Did I wake you?”

“Yes, Potter, you did. Several nights in a row, in fact.” 

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

Draco falters, suddenly unarmed, but only for a moment. “Are you not tired?”

“Come sit with me.”

He feels like he’s tilting sideways. “P-pardon?”

“You’re awake anyways.”

Draco feels the blood rushing to his face. “No thanks to you.”

“Just come sit. Please?” 

Draco bites his lip and looks around. All is quiet, the lights in the other two cottages are off. The moon, shrouded - air, thick with anticipation. 

“Fine.”

Harry is sitting on a small stretch of stone peeking from the grass, and Draco joins him so they’re sitting shoulder to shoulder, facing the vastness before them. 

For several, long moments, they don’t speak. Then:

“I’m sorry about what I said.”

“Don’t be.”

“What?”

“I said don’t be. Nothing you said wasn’t true.”

Harry leans in close, and Draco leans away. “Not the part about you being a prick.”

“Don’t.” Draco puts a hand up. "Don’t pity me.”

Harry’s face, in the near-dark, is unreadable. “Okay. I won’t.” His fingers turn a sprig of grass over and over. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Draco lies.

A silence. Draco contemplates making his excuses and retreating when Harry speaks again:

“How did you learn all this stuff? About history and nature and everything.”

“Through study.”

Harry looks at him, eyebrow quirked.

“You think I was born knowing? It’s part of the job.”

“It seems like fun.”

A distant sound rolls through the valley. “Yes,” Draco says. “It is.” 

“I don’t know much about all of this. I didn’t get out much as a child. And the last time I went camping…” Harry trails off. “Well. It was a long time ago.”

“Curious choice for a bachelor’s trip.”

He snorts at that, the first thing resembling a smile on his face that Draco’s seen in days. “It was Ron’s idea. He thought it would be...calming. Being in nature and all.”

“Nature has that kind of effect. It is unfortunate modern wizarding life is so…”

“Boxed in?”

Draco inclines his head. “Yes.”

“I agree. ‘s why I quit the Ministry.” Draco didn’t even know Harry had worked there to begin with. “Those white walls and windows that lead nowhere…” Harry shakes his head.

Another sound, a rumbling, like a particularly prodigious dragon snore.

“What is that?” Harry asks.

“Hm. I’m-”

A drop. Then two. Then all at once. 

“Fuck!” Harry exclaims, shooting to his feet.

The first rain is always the heaviest. And Draco didn’t bring his wand. 

“This way!” Draco calls over the downpour.

The two men trudge through the grass and funnel into Draco’s cottage. Draco’s coat, nightshirt, and pajama bottoms are soaked through, and Harry isn’t much better off. Draco lends Harry some clothing, and the pair take turns taking hot showers. 

After, they squeeze onto the two-seater in the living room, and listen to the song of rain. The dryer hums in the background, and their clothes tumble around together. Draco could dry them with a flick of his wand, but there is no rush, and he’s grown quite used to doing it all the Muggle way. 

“Hey, Malfoy.”

Harry’s voice is so soft that Draco doesn’t want to look at him.

“Yes?”

“How much did you hear? The nights I woke you up.”

Draco considers lying. “Most everything. Muffliato is a very useful charm, Potter.”

Harry breathes out a long breath. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Should’ve thought of that.”

Shush, shush, the rain brushes the shingled roof, and collects at the edges. 

“Before you ask, no, Potter, I do not have love advice for you.”

Harry looks up. “Have you…?”

Draco turns his face away quickly. “No. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

When Draco sneaks a look again, Harry’s head is drooped low and his quick fingers knitted together at his forehead - a man defeated, a man stripped away.

“Are you really so nervous? You’ve known each other since childhood.”

“It isn’t that.” Harry pauses. “Or, actually, it is that.”

His bitterness poisons his voice. Draco isn’t sure who it’s indicting.

“I-I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“Then don’t.”

Harry looks up, his brows furrowed. “It isn’t that simple.”

“It is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Draco considers this. “I understand enough. You’re carrying through with it because you think you owe it. To her, to the Weasleys, to the world.”

“Th-that’s not true-”

“Oh, it is,” Draco interrupts him, “It’s obvious, and so stereotypical - the poor, Golden Saviour, who thinks he needs to make everyone else’s dreams come true.”

“But this is my dream,” Harry protests weakly.

Draco quells him with a look, his words sharp, “Is it, still?”

Before Harry can respond, Draco rises. “Go. Take the bed. We’re leaving early tomorrow.”

Harry glares at him. “I can walk back, just cast an Impervious.” Apparently, he had left his own wand in his cottage. 

“Look at you, Potter. You’re practically asleep already.”

Harry continues glaring at him, his eyes drooping. “Where are you going to sleep?”

The couch is not long enough to accommodate Draco, he knows this, but he persists. “I will find something. Just, go.”

“No.” Harry stands, too. “The beds are wide enough for two people.”

“Out of the question.”

“Malfoy, I don’t want you to sleep on the floor!”

“This isn’t about what you want!”

“Malfoy…come on.”

Though he resists it, Draco feels himself slipping. He’s not as young as he once was; the floor could wreak havoc on his back, and they still have three days of hiking to go.

“...Fine.”

They get settled. If Harry notices the vial still standing on the nightstand, he doesn’t comment, and Draco relaxes a little bit. 

But it’s still strange; Draco hasn’t slept with another person in a long time. Apparently, living in one of the most remote places in the Isles is not a quality people look for in a partner. Everything - the extra rhythm of breaths, the sharing of the sheets, the radiating warmth - feels out of place in Snowdonia, a place Draco has only experienced alone for half a decade.

Eventually, even under the strange circumstances, the siren call of the rain lulls Draco to oblivion.

The next day, Draco wakes more refreshed than he’s been in a long time. Outside, the rain continues, a tapping at the window and on the roof. 

He wakes Harry, his body is still warm with sleep. Wordlessly, they get ready; Draco pulls their clothes out of the dryer, passes them over. Harry takes them, mumbles something, and ducks out of the cottage to return to his own.

Draco steps out into the gray morning. The rain is not as heavy anymore, more aluminum than lead. At the flooded fire pit, the men are already strapped up, Impervious’d, and waving to Draco.

“Morning, Malfoy! Crazy storm, huh?” Longbottom comments, cheerily. 

Draco lets himself smile, casts Impervious, and joins them.

They don’t walk very far. Draco opts to take them to Llyn Trawsfynydd, instead of his originally planned, more treacherous hike.

“Lake Traws is not a natural lake,” Draco explains as they kayak across its surface, riddled with raindrops. “Muggles designed this, filled it, to be their water source.”

Thomas whistles. Weasley exclaims, “Without magic? There’s no way.”

Draco nods. “Muggles can be quite resourceful. And it happens to be in our favor, as our dragons use it frequently.”

Finnigan speaks up: “But not now, right?”

“Yes, that’s correct. They do not need to intake food or water during hibernation.”

They paddle onwards, conversation flowing freely. Save for them, it’s quiet - a few Muggles walk the shore with their umbrellas out, and the rain comes and goes, but no birds call, and whatever fish that swim the reservoir have gone deep into the murk. 

Harry tells a joke, sending his friends into an uproarious fit of laughter. He pays them no mind. He looks instead to Draco, a half-smile on his weary face.

Overhead, the gray hides the light, but Draco still feels warmed.

That night, they gather in Draco’s cottage to play Muggle cards - poker, mostly, though they switch to Old Maid after everyone takes pity on Longbottom’s losing streak. The rain has mostly abated, though thunder still strikes out in the valley from time to time, an open threat. 

A few hours pass, and the shadows outside deepen. One by one, Longbottom, Weasley, Thomas, Finnigan retire for the evening - the latter two pounding Draco on the back on their way out (the last game ended with Draco being the Old Maid).

Draco gathers the cards and fits them neatly back into the box. He tucks them into his pack, and when he’s done, he stares out the dark window, refusing to make eye contact. If Harry Potter has something to say, then he can say it first, and Draco will wait. He has learned to be quite good at it.

“They like you, you know.”

Draco feels his pulse jump. “Do they?”

“They think you’ve changed.” 

Draco looks over, and almost starts at the look on Harry’s face. Open, serious, pointed like an arrow towards Draco. 

“And you? What do you think?”

By all conventional standards, Harry is an attractive man: shoulders solid as a foundation, hands quick and darting like small fish, silver in the streams. But his voice - anyone would know he was attractive from the way he speaks. The strumming rhythm, the undergirding fervency - Harry Potter talks like a hero would talk. Like he is both speaking to the world and confessing a secret for your ears alone. 

“I think that I forgive you.”

Talks like a hero, plays the part, too. Draco is tired of needing to be saved. 

“Don’t. I told you not to pity me.”

“This isn’t pity, Malfoy.”

“What is it then,” Draco asks, not at all like a question.

A pause. Then, slowly, “We could have been friends. If at Madam Malkin’s…”

“Don’t,” Draco whispers, closing his eyes. That old pain, so old it’s like the ground on which Draco walks. Transparent and fragile: a bed of glass flowers. 

But Harry continues, trampling through as he always does. “I’ve thought about you a lot since the War. I was so angry in the early years.” He takes a breath. “I never wanted to see you again.”

The rain has ended, and the night is so, so quiet without it.

“But Hermione told me something. She reminded me that we were all children, that you were just a child-”

Draco stands so quickly the chair topples over. The glass vial in his pocket weighs like stones. When he speaks, he only manages a whisper: “That’s quite enough. I must ask you to leave now, Potter, so we both may get some sleep.”

Harry stares. “Malfoy-”

“Please,” Draco interrupts, “Leave.” 

After a long moment, Harry stands and makes for the door. As he turns the knob, he pauses, but only for a second. The door clicks shut, and Draco is alone.

Fatigue rolls over him, clouded and heavy. He takes himself to bed, but still is without rest. By the thin light of the moon, escaping its cloud cover, Draco catches the glint of the vial on the bedside table, and its unmoving contents. He touches the mottled flesh of his left forearm, the shape familiar to him even in the dark: here, the eye sockets, here, the figure eight of the snake, and here, its open mouth. 

Night falls away and the sun comes up for breath once more, but Draco barely notices its pink light.

Draco takes them to the coast, where the grass and rocks turn to fine-grained sand, and the sky kisses bae ceredigion - Cardigan Bay. 

Weasley lets out a whoop of joy at the first glimmer of water, and he and Finnigan race to the sea’s edge. Thomas yells, “Wait for me!” as he struggles to get his boots off. Longbottom stands in between Draco and Harry, shielding his eyes as he traces the coastline. 

“All of this is part of Snowdonia?” Longbottom asks.

Draco nods.

“Mountains, rivers, the sea...You have it all.”

From the water, a shriek rings out. “Fuck, it’s cold!” Finnigan exclaims. Weasley splashes him, and the two begin chasing each other, fighting and getting wet. 

Though his parents were fond of trips in his childhood - taking him to see French chateaus, the ancient sites of Egypt, the golden temples in Thailand - they had only taken him to the ocean once. The Mediterranean, during their trip to Italy when Draco was very young - young enough to only remember a single image: looking over the rocks, stacked to his feet, at that impossible blue.

They never went back, and they never went to the sea again. When he’d asked to at least see the English Channel, they had refused. Nothing to see, just water. And besides, your mother would be worried - you can’t swim. 

You never taught me how - is what Draco would say now, if there was any use.

The vial, left on the table, pricks at him. 

“It’s a good place,” Draco says simply. 

For lunch, they picnic on the beach. The wind that blows is warm, today, and it carries brine and salt. The storm has completely dissipated now, unhindering the sun’s shine. Draco watches the men stretch out in the afternoon light. Thomas takes off his jacket and lays it on Finnigan’s dozing body. Weasley begins to snore openly, his head a mop of red in Harry’s lap. 

With one hand on his friend’s chest, Harry stares out, his profile serious and hidden. Draco follows his gaze, but sees only the pale edge of the world. 

Today, Harry hasn’t looked his way once, and why should he? There was nothing to see, anyways - just a man, alone. 

Draco turns away, that gray fatigue still curled around his shoulders.

After their brief spell of drowsiness, Weasley rises, and wipes his eyes blearily. “Where to, next, Malfoy?”

“Let’s walk. There is something I have yet to show you.”

So they walk, unsteadily through the dunes, the wind pulling at their jackets. 

“We, the caretakers, do not come here often. Unless for emergencies, it is better to leave this place alone, but it’s still winter, so we may be allowed.”

If they have questions, the group of men don’t vocalize them. Over the last week, they have grown accustomed to Draco’s purposeful vagueness, the way he sets up for a particular reveal. If Draco were an optimistic person, he could let himself imagine that they trust him, trust that the punchline will always be fulfilling. But he is not, and he has long learned that fantasies are just that. So he keeps moving.

There. They climb a particularly high dune, and once Longbottom reaches the top, he gasps and flings out his arm to hold the rest back. Finnigan gapes and Thomas clutches his husband’s arm, whispering furiously in his ear and pointing. Weasley’s jaw drops. Harry adjusts his glasses and squints.

“The Nursery,” Draco speaks, just loud enough to beat the wind, but no louder. 

Before them lies a pit dug in the sand, just wide around to fit a gray dragon coiled around the perimeter. The dragon shines dully, its scales like slabs of stone, and its stomach rises and falls as it sleeps. Nestled between its horned head and its slick tail are five eggs: black as obsidian, and just as smooth.

“Though we oversee twenty adult dragons in Snowdonia, a brood this plentiful only comes once a decade. The eggs themselves take up to two years to hatch, and once they do, the Wyrmlings inside reach adolescence after fifty years, and adulthood fifty years after that.” 

“W-when are these going to hatch? Is that their parent?” Finnigan asks, transfixed.

“We think they are set to hatch this year. And no, that is their aunt. In this particular species, the family members take turns guarding the brood during hibernation. Last year, one of their mothers kept watch.”

Nervously, Weasley asks, “Should we be so close? She won’t wake up and blast us, will she?”

Despite himself, Draco feels his lips quirk up. “No, Weasley, she will not ‘blast us,’ as you say. There is a reason we are here in winter. You are right that they are very protective when they are awake, which is why we don’t usually come here as caretakers - much less bring guests.”

“Isn’t she cold? Isn’t it dangerous?” Longbottom asks with a frown.

“Her scales act as insulation, and no, it is not dangerous, especially with the Refuge keeping watch. Though before, when dragons freely flew the Earth, there was some level of danger due to their open nest design. But the eggs need to be kept cool to survive - in the warmer months, the dragons bury them in the sand.”

“It must be hard…” Longbottom trails off.

Draco considers this. “Yes, it is. But all dragons are deeply invested in their families, and in the continuation of their lineage. They likely consider the sacrifice a worthy one.”

They stand on the edge of the nest for a long time, watching the eggs, unmoving like stones, and the slow rise and fall of their aunt’s chest. Out of the corner of his eye, Draco catches Weasley sliding his hand over Harry’s back, and inclining his head to speak something in his ear. Harry shakes his head and shrugs Weasley’s arm off. 

Draco looks away. He squints against the falling sun instead, and says, “We should return. It will be good weather, tonight, for stargazing.”

With the sun gone, the cold quickly encroaches - the last breath of winter - but the men lay comfortably, basking in their warming charms. It’s the last night of their trip, so they’ve brought out the liquor and the wine.

“To your marital bliss!” Weasley had toasted, sloshing his drink. The other men raised their glasses, and Harry did, too, his face pale in the firelight.

Now, all was quiet. The stars above shine their faint lights, and the constellations they build together pulse with life.

Finnigan whispers, “I’ve never seen Orion so bright before.”

“Where is that?” Thomas asks, and Finnigan stretches out a hand and traces the hunter’s lines for his husband.

“Pegasus is beautiful, too,” Longbottom breathes.

“I’ve always wished I could ride him,” Thomas says. “Weird how we have unicorns but not pegasi, eh?”

Longbottom and Finnigan laugh, and when Weasley lets out a huffing snore, they laugh even harder.

“Oh,” Longbottom whispers, after they settle down, “and there’s Draco.”

Draco’s namesake seems to twinkle in greeting. Most other constellations come and go, depending on the time of year, but Draco never sets. Always and forever, whether Draco looks up or not, the dragon twists on in the dark. 

Time passes, and soon, heavy with wine and shitty vodka, breaths slow and ease into sleep. Beside Draco, Harry lies flat on his back, his eyes fixed on the sky. Where their arms nearly touch feels like a line of heat. 

“I didn’t know Draco was a constellation,” Harry says, so softly that Draco barely catches it.

“In the myths, it was one of the giants who tried to overthrow the gods. Ultimately, Athena - or Minerva - slew it, and threw it into the sky - freezing it in its coils forever.”

“The goddess of wisdom?”

“Yes.” Draco waits for the barb. He is not afraid. Harry Potter cannot say anything that he hasn’t already said to himself.

But it doesn’t come. “I’m going ahead with Ginny,” Harry blurts out. 

The fire burns low, leaving only coals.

“You were right, she isn’t my dream anymore.” He pauses. “But the War taught me that dreaming isn’t what counts, it’s the choosing that does. So I’m choosing this - I’m choosing her.”

Draco closes his eyes. “I commend you.”

“Thanks.”

He shivers as the wind blows over them - the warming charms are wearing off, and the night is settling in. Spring, he had named the teasing warmth, but he was foolish and too optimistic: winter hasn’t released its grip upon the world quite yet. 

Harry sits up. “I’d better get them in their beds.”

“Yes,” Draco murmurs, “that would be for the best.”

“Malfoy.” He opens his eyes. Harry is staring down at him, his face shadowed. “Thank you. For what you said, and for this trip. You really helped get my head straight.”

“My pleasure.”

“You can come, if you want. To the wedding.” For the first time all night, Harry sounds unsure. He looks away.

Draco imagines it: him, dressed up, mingling among the dozens of Weasleys and Weasley-adjacents, and trying the finger food. Watching Harry wait for someone else. Listening to his vows for someone else. Watching him kiss someone else. 

He sits up, and with one hand on Longbottom’s shoulder, gently shakes him awake. Longbottom grumbles and wipes at his eyes. 

“I would love to, Potter, but I’m afraid I cannot. With spring approaching, I am going to be quite busy here.”

“I see.”

“Wuzzat?” Weasley bursts out as Longbottom wakes him.

“Come on,” Harry says, walking over to pull his friend up. “Let’s get to bed.”

The men trek off - Thomas and Finnigan to their cottage, and the rest to theirs. 

“Good night, Malfoy.” Harry calls softly over his shoulder, before turning and walking arm-in-arm with Weasley through their threshold. 

The doors close, and the light that spilled from within slides off Draco’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate you!


	4. FOUR

Spring comes. The streams flush with snowmelt, and on their banks, the wildflowers begin to bud. Once shriveled and gray, the grasses fill and thicken with green - and when it rains, a sweet smell lingers on the wind for days afterward. When Draco walks the valleys and hills, now, the foxes rustle the brush. When he walks the birch forests, deer dart at the corners of his vision. Snowdonia unfurls like long petaled blossoms beneath his feet, and the clouds above crisscross the bright sky. 

He busies himself - there is much to be done with the end of winter. He fills the watering hole. He readies the food stores. He sharpens and resharpens his dragonhide tools, as the end of hibernation means a mass shedding of old scales and skin.

His coworkers - M. Prasad and Lin Walker - flit in and out, helping him here and there, but he scarcely sees them. Amira comes by, too, giving him direction. Bringing him the lunch he’s been neglecting:

“Draco,” she says.

His arms elbow deep in the crumbling dirt, Draco turns slightly. “Yes?”

“You’ve forgotten to eat.”

He pulls his arms out, and wipes at his sweat. “Have I?”

“I’m leaving it here.”

“Thank you.” With a grunt, he pulls up a long-stemmed weed.

She seems to make no move to leave. 

“You’re doing well, Draco.”

He pauses, and sits back. He doesn’t want to turn, doesn’t want to look upon her face. 

“I know what you’re thinking, and it isn’t true,” he says.

The smile in her voice is dulled and sad. “Then correct me.”

He doesn’t answer, and reaches for the trowel. “You should go back.” The sunlight beats down on them both. “It’s hot out.”

After a moment, he hears the rubber turning of her chair. “You’re going to be just fine, Draco. Just fine,” she says, before leaving - the turning of the wheels tapping its metal rhythm.

Amira’s platitudes, Prasad’s cautious jokes, Walker’s shoulder squeezes - they are stones to him, gray and lifeless. All of it falls away, like the husks of skin and dull scales he harvests from the dragon nests. Hollowed out, pale without blood thrumming beneath it, Draco does his job, and he does it damn well, but always, he remembers: Harry Potter, tilting his head in farewell. Harry Potter’s hands on the wheel, expertly backing out. Harry Potter’s car pulling off with the friends he chose, to his wife he chose, toward the future he chose. 

But the dragons are flying. And he has work again - hard work collecting manure and feeding the fledglings and wrestling thermometers into dragon mouths. Draco writes his mother, telling her he’s happy, and he is - really, he is. Because what was he expecting, anyways? Harry Potter is over there, and Draco Malfoy is over here, and that’s always how it’s been. 

Fantasies and dreams do nothing - like Harry said. They did nothing during the War, when Draco was caged in fear, and they do nothing now, when he is finally free.

This is the life Draco chose, the one he chooses, rising from his bed, every single day. 

It just doesn’t happen to include Harry Potter.

The wind grows warm, and the days lengthen, and before Draco properly stops to take it in, spring passes into summer. The tour groups come - families and couples fleeing the cobblestoned Wizarding world. Draco takes them up and down the mountains. He leads them wading through the rapids, and he shows them the best, shadowy respites from the beating sun. 

Snowdonia is an old place. The dragons it hides are younger, but still unfathomably ancient to mortals - so old they predate most Wizarding lineages. Though some visitors shudder at the thought, it steadies Draco’s hand and quiets his heart. He touches the smooth horn of a young dragon, curled in on itself and snoring, and he touches a creature born before his father was even a thought. He disturbs a stone, and sends it tumbling off into the river below, and he’s moved something that hasn’t in centuries. The continuity is like a balm on his raw heart.

He keeps his father’s ashes on his person, often. He takes it out sometimes, on windy days or while standing over a calm stretch of river, and considers releasing its contents. But he never does. Lucius Malfoy wouldn’t appreciate being spread so thin. He’s always liked his constraints - they shaped him, so to speak.

If there is anyone to tell by then, Draco thinks to himself, I’ll tell them that, when I go, I want to go everywhere:

The mountains, the rivers, the sea - all these places that have and will always exist - will take him in, and at least one part of Draco will last.

Early summer, and Draco is sitting inside, out of the afternoon sun. He organizes their files and records behind the receptionist desk, and inwardly scowls at the haphazard sorting system that is no doubt Prasad’s doing. From his right, down the hall, he hears movement in Amira’s office - likely trying to get the onboarding material in order.

It’s a busy week - both Prasad and Walker are out on extended camping excursions, leaving Draco and Amira at base, alone, to prepare for five new baby dragons. 

Their family has been active recently - their parents, their uncle and aunt and grandfather, all alighting one by one on the beach. Hatchings are a delicate time. As a caretaker, Draco must ensure their safety during the event, but he can only approach the nest alone, and under the close supervision of a half a dozen anxious, fire-breathing dragons. Thus, most of the set up - the food and the baths and towels for washing - must be prepared beforehand, off site, and then transported there the day-of. And no one, not even the family, knows the exact day. 

They will come when they come, Draco reminds himself. He stashes the rest of the invoices in the desk drawer and bangs it shut. He sighs, and when his eyes inevitably snap to the blistering outside, that agonizing blue of sky, he sees it.

Climbing the horizon, a glint of metal - a familiar car. It approaches slowly, the air around it wavering like Draco’s heart. 

It can’t be, it must be. 

“Amira, I think the newcomer is here.” He calls.

“Coming,” she calls back. A moment later, she wheels into view and stops to watch with Draco. “Right on time.” Draco hears the smile in her voice.

It must be, it can’t be. 

The car arrives, and pulls into the parking lot, out of sight. A door opens and slams, and the car locks with a chirp. Harry Potter walks into view.

Amira is there to greet him when he enters. “Harry Potter, is it? Good to meet you.”

They shake hands, and Harry smiles warmly at her. “Mrs. Felding, good to see you in person.”

“And you’ve met Draco already, haven’t you?”

They lock eyes. “Yes,” Harry says, breathless, “I have.”

Draco rises from the desk, and walks over. He extends a hand, and they shake - Harry’s warm, smooth palm against Draco’s. His ringless fingers, touching Draco’s. “Good to have you,” he says. 

Harry smiles. “Good to be back.”

Outside, a flock of dragons cross the sky, a gray spear pointing toward home.

Amira takes Harry to her office to finish up on some paperwork, giving Draco a chance to collect himself. When they finish, Amira instructs Draco to give Harry a tour. And so he does.

“This is the main building,” he says, avoiding eye contact, “All of our offices are in here, and this is where you will work.” Draco rests a hand on the receptionist counter. “The restrooms are down the hall, first right. There’s a breakroom, too - last right.”

Harry nods, but says nothing. 

“Alright, let’s move on.”

Draco takes him outside, shows him the path shooting off from the main circle. Leads him to the semi-circle of cabins at the end.

“This is where the staff lives. That is Amira’s cabin, that is Prasad and Walker’s, and this is mine.” Draco points to each one in turn. “Since Prasad and Walker share, and Amira shares with her wife, the dragon veterinarian who visits occasionally, you’ll be staying with me.”

“Oh.”

“Collect your belongings, and you can get settled.”

Harry flicks his wand, and a wordless spell yanks his bags from his car like on a string. They step inside the cabin.

It’s a simple space, Draco knows it. Not much decoration, and only the bare minimum of furniture: a loveseat, a coffee table, a dining table, and two chairs. In their shared bedroom stand two queen beds, separated by a nightstand. They face a large bureau, which Draco supposes they will have to share, and the far wall opens to the back deck, where two metal chairs stand, overlooking the communal vegetable garden.

Draco prays Harry passes over the vial, which he forgot to stow away. 

“Wow.”

“No need to mask your disappointment, Potter.”

“Wha-? No, I’m not disappointed.” Gently, Harry lays a hand atop the bureau. “Really, this is great. Better than I imagined.”

A beat. Draco takes a deep breath. “What are you doing here, Potter?”

A smile touches Harry’s lips, like some inward joke.

“What is so funny?”

“I’m here to work, Malfoy.”

“I am not amused.”

“No,” Harry sighs, dropping his head, “you’re not.”

All the words that had been bubbling up, frothing in his throat, die on Draco’s tongue. The slump of his shoulders, the deprecating smile - Draco has only seen Harry like this once before. A man, defeated by love.

“You didn’t marry her.”

Slowly, Harry shakes his head. “I didn’t marry her.”

“...You’re a coward, Potter.”

“I guess I am.”

Draco has lost much of his patience for dramatics. “So why come here?”

Harry looks up, then, and it’s only then that Draco realizes how close they are - Harry, leaning in, and Draco with his back to the doorframe. Those eyes of his, so very green. And in their depths, Draco sees himself reflected - small and nervous. 

“I wanted-” Harry stops. Wets his lips. “I-I wanted….to work.” He finishes lamely.

They are silent and unmoving for one, loaded moment before: “Fine.” Draco says, ducking out of the door frame and out of Harry’s range. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine, I apologize for being so intrusive.” 

He turns and walks to the door. “Welcome to the team,” he tosses over his shoulder, before pushing open the door and getting back to work. 

A week passes, then two. After a few days of training, Harry seems to settle into his new job; he organizes the paperwork and makes schedules and charms every guest that steps through the doors. 

And the rest of the staff seem to acclimate themselves to him, as well. More than once, Draco has heard laughter and cheery conversation float in from the breakroom - Harry and Prasad bonding over some new Weird Sisters single, Harry and Walker talking Quidditch, Harry and Amira chatting about embroidery. 

Harry tries to make friends with Draco, too, and quite incessantly. At every turn, Harry is there - offering Draco breakfast in the morning, helping him spell his bags back to their cabin after a trip. They settle into an uneasy rhythm: they wake up together, walk to work together, take turns cooking, and go to sleep together. When Harry goes out to buy groceries, he always comes back with a box of Draco’s favorite tea. And when Draco accidentally falls asleep in bed, with a book in his lap, he always wakes the next morning tucked in, with his reading glasses neatly folded atop his book - both set on the nightstand. 

They don’t speak much, which, to Draco, is even stranger than his new, domestic reality with Harry Potter. Since the conversation they had in the cabin, when Harry first arrived at work, they haven’t conversed about anything more personal than the warming weather, work, or food. Anytime they’re alone together, Draco keeps bracing himself for the inevitable, intrusive question, but it never comes. 

And above all else, Harry keeps his distance - physically. When their hands accidentally brush as he hands off Draco’s tea, Harry jerks back, ever so slightly. When Harry passes him in the kitchen, he gives Draco a wide berth. Draco thought the pricking at his collar would ease - that the gripping tension he felt in his chest every time Harry got too close, looked for too long, would fade as Harry kept away. 

But he feels it still: a cord tugging, always tugging, in Harry’s direction.

“Surprise!” A shower of sparks, green and silver, rain over Draco and settle like stars on his cloak. 

“Happy birthday, Draco,” Amira says warmly, rolling over to rest a hand on his arm. “Come, we made you something.”

Draco allows himself to be led to the kitchen, where a lopsided cake sits on the table, smeared with white icing, and topped with an icing serpent that’s been charmed to weave through the candles. He looks back at his coworkers.

“This was a team effort!” Prasad announces, proudly. “Lin and Amira baked the cake, Harry made the icing, and I spelled the snake!”

“I-” Draco pauses, then bows his head. “Thank you, everyone.” When he looks back up, Harry is beaming, his smile scorching.

“Well, Draco?” Walker says, her arms folded and a slight smile on her face. “Make a wish.”

Draco turns back around to face the cake. The candles burn bright, their flames, a rainbow of different colors. Now blue, now green, now red. Slowly, the wax beads, and snakes down, threatening to fall into the icing.

He closes his eyes, and makes a wish.

Then he blows the candles out.

They dig in. Draco finds himself quite ravenous after another long day packaging manure. Prasad smears a bit of icing on their girlfriend’s face, and the ever-stoic Lin Walker cracks a smile. Amira challenges Harry to a game of Exploding Snap, and when Harry loses - which was most of the games they played - he laughs and laughs, his voice a miracle in the setting light. 

It’s full dark when they begin to clean up and make for home. Up above, Draco hears the strong beating of wings - dragons returning home to rest. And from far off in the valley comes the hooting of the owls as they rise, only beginning their hunt. 

Draco goes to use the washroom, and when he opens the door to step out, Prasad and Walker block him, and they crowd him back in and close the door.

“I-what-”

“Can I put my hands on your shoulders?” Walker asks, her face serious.

Draco feels as though the world is tilting. “I-uh-yes?”

She does - her broad palms are a comforting weight. She doesn’t break eye contact. 

“Don’t hesitate,” she says.

Prasad lays their hand on Draco’s arm, their touch gentle, and their brown eyes warmer than Draco has ever seen them: “You deserve it, Draco. And he wants to give it to you.”

Walker nods, then takes her hands off. “Allow yourself this.” She turns to the door. “And have a happy birthday.”

“That’s all we wanted to say,” Prasad says, cheeriness filling their round face once more. “Happy birthday!” They file out, and leave the door open. From the sitting room, Draco hears Harry compliment Amira’s cloak. 

He steels himself, tries to calm the thrumming in him - the music of his heart - and steps out.

After exchanging farewells, Draco waves his friends off, and closes the door. He hesitates a moment, then joins Harry in the kitchen, where the latter is putting the last of the dishes away. 

“Here,” he says, rolling up his sleeves, “Let me help with that.”

Without even turning around, Harry steps to the side to block Draco from the sink. The smile in his voice shines as he speaks. “It’s your birthday, Malfoy. Just let me do this for you.”

Something rises in Draco, then, as it often did these days. A rushing, daring feeling that only came when Harry was around. 

“V-very well, then.” Draco steps back and awkwardly leans against a counter. He tears his eyes away from Harry’s back and the muscles there, how they work as he dries and reaches up, into the cabinet. 

“And stick around, will you? I have something to give you after this.”

The cabinet handles dig into his thigh. “Alright,” he breathes out. “Alright.”

True to his word, once the last of the dishes are cleaned and stowed away, Harry dashes into their bedroom and comes out with a box - simply wrapped, with a poor attempt at a ribbon bow on top. He holds it out to Draco. Draco takes it.

Inside, is a pair of snakeskin work gloves. Red with black diamonds, the scales are oil-slick and gleaming in the warm light. 

“Sweat wicking, on the inside,” Harry says. “And the outside is stain, water, and fire resistant.” 

Draco stares at his gift. The craftsmanship is sublime, and the charm work is complex. With his thumb, he rubs the inside lining, and it’s smooth as cream. 

Anxiously, Harry asks, “Do you like it?”

“...You remembered,” Draco finally says.

“That you hate your regular gloves? Of course.”

More than once, Draco had come stomping into the house, cursing and peeling off his stained, sweat-soaked work gloves. They were the ones he used to do everything, from gardening to manure collection, but although he has grown accustomed to almost all the dirty realities of his job and lifestyle - muddied, sweaty hands remained a sticking point. 

“Thank you.” Draco says, the sincerity in his voice surprising him. He looks up, and there Harry is, suddenly. Watching him, his face intense. And very close. 

“You’re welcome,” Harry replies, his voice careful.

Draco waits from Harry to catch himself and step back, but he doesn’t. Their heads are so close that their breaths seem to mingle in the air. 

“Wh-where did you find this?” Draco breathes.

“I asked Charlie,” Harry admits. “Charlie Weasley. He-uh-works with dragons too.”

This close, Draco smells Harry. A fresh scent. Heady. 

“I see.”

For a long moment, neither men speak. They just breathe in the night air, filtering in from the open window. 

The line between them stretches taut and with every breath, Draco hears its vibration - the song it spins out of nothing. 

“Can I kiss you?” Harry asks.

Draco swallows, his throat dry. The gloves grow warm in his hands. “Is this why you left her?”

The question seems to catch Harry off guard. He blinks, then looks away, out the kitchen window. “It’s not the entire reason.”

Draco waits. Again, he is quite good at it.

“I lasted until the day of the wedding. I thought I could do it.” Harry’s voice is torn, raw. “Then I remembered what you said. About not wanting to disappoint anyone.”

He smiles slightly, and turns toward Draco again, his face like ash. “How did you do it? Know me like that?”

One hand still gripping the gloves and the box they came in, Draco rests his other, after a moment’s hesitation, on Harry’s arm.

“By the end, me and Ginny weren’t even sleeping in the same bed,” Harry continues. “I-I think I knew, deep down, but didn’t want to say it. I thought I could wait it out.”

Draco exhales slow and steady. “You thought you could wait it out,” he repeats.

Harry nods, then drops his forehead the last remaining centimeters between them - so they are standing forehead to forehead, so close their noses touch.

Draco remembers. He cannot forget. His bated breath, all of Sixth Year, anticipating, dreading the sign to proceed. Watching his childhood home become a slaughterhouse, a torture chamber with too many rooms to hide in and not enough doors from which to escape - clinging onto whatever scraps of hope he could find that someday, one way or another, it will all be over. 

And his father. After the Kiss and the seven years that followed, sitting patiently at the door, waiting for the reprieve of Death to come knocking.

Something in Draco stirs, then. An animal waking, its maw opening pink as it yawns. The glint of recognition as it lifts its head, and sees, across the way, another creature rising, too.

But still, one question burns a red line through Draco’s chest - the cinder cord that makes music out of every glance, every smile, every kind word Harry gives him. Draco opens his mouth, and sings it:

“Why me?”

Harry’s voice, when he speaks, parts the heavy summer air. Half-proclamation, half-confidence, all melody: “Because it’s you.”

A simple statement. So simple, it’s almost bare of any feeling, like branches in winter. From anyone else’s mouth, the words would drop to the floor - a stone - but from Harry’s, they bud and unfurl. Draco hears the blooms open; he hears them gather on the ground. Then, he hears the way the tree swells with summer.

_Allow yourself this._

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes,” Draco tells Harry, “You can kiss me.”

Harry smiles, leans forward, and Draco meets him halfway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 <3 <3


	5. FIVE

Draco’s affections come swift and easy after that - like all this while he has been holding his breath, and now he’s finally letting go. 

Draco learns Harry’s favorite foods, how he likes his tea. At lunchtime, when they are both working the office that day, they sit outside to eat. After, they lay in the grass - head to head - and let the sun fall on their faces. 

Sometimes, their coworkers join them: Prasad, chattering and joking away, Walker, softly laughing, and Amira, touching her hand to Draco’s and smiling. If they notice any change, they don’t name it, but Draco sees the tenderness in the looks they give him. Or maybe that tenderness was always there, and now he finally knows to look.

The gully between Draco and the others shrinks a bit. When before, Draco could see the other side, but never cross the staggering jump, he joins in on the fun, now - ribbing and joking and flashing his silver tongue. And when he banters with Prasad, he finds it hard to stop. Especially when Harry is laughing and laughing and looking at Draco like he never wants to look anywhere else.

And now, Draco allows himself to look back. He studies Harry’s face - the cut of his jaw, his sloping nose, the bow of his lips. He traces the lines of his body, and notes the flex of his forearms as he digs the trowel into soil, and the stretch of his calves when he walks. Draco stares at his hands. His smooth, dark skin, the lines on his palms, the tendons in his fingers. 

Those same hands touch Draco any chance they get. When cooking supper together, they slide along Draco’s waist as Harry squeezes by. When on a hike and Draco stumbles on a loose bit of rock, they shoot out to catch him. And when kissing, well, they are everywhere and endless. 

They begin sleeping in the same bed at night - Draco’s bed. Harry on the right, Draco on the left. The sound of Harry’s breathing becomes as familiar to Draco as the fluxes of Snowdonia; the rains and droughts, the tides of the seasons. Before he slips into sleep, Harry’s warmth is the last thing he takes comfort in. And when he wakes, Harry is the first thing his hands reach for. 

The height of summer, and they are laying on their bedrolls in the open air. They’ve made camp at the same place they stopped when they first visited Glyder Fawr, half a life ago. Their fire has burnt down to coals, then extinguished to nothing, but the smell of smoke lingers no matter how the gentle summer winds try to carve it away.

Leo, Virgo, Libra, Draco names, teaching Harry their names and tracing their shapes on the back of his hand. He conjures for him the story of mighty Perseus, Gorgon Slayer. Draco details his journey back - how Perseus caught sight of the maiden Andromeda, chained to a rock at sea, and slew the sea serpent Cetes to marry her. He draws for Harry their constellations, how they will wheel side by side forever: a collection of stars, disparate, but facing each other.

There’s a shush of fabric as Harry turns his head to look at Draco. “You really hate that idea, don’t you?”

Draco turns his head to look back. Even under the hood of night, Draco can make out Harry’s expression - his steady brow and focused eyes, the serious set of his mouth. 

“How did you know?”

“I know you,” Harry says simply, easily. Not a boast or a rash, infatuation-fueled statement - just a truth. 

Draco turns back, so he’s facing the open stretch of stars once again. When he quiets his breath, he fancies he can feel a slight movement beneath him: the slow rise and fall of Glyder Fawr’s slumber. 

“I wouldn’t want to be a constellation,” Draco admits. “With just one person, on display to the world, but unable to reach down.”

“Even if you’re with the love of your life?” Harry asks. In some of Draco’s ex-boyfriends’ mouths, the question would be a trap laid at his feet, ready to sink in its metal teeth and never let go. But Harry is empty-handed, and the ground is flush only with grass.

“Yes, even then.” Draco closes his eyes, and feels the breeze as it picks up. “I don’t want to be trapped, never changing.”

Above, Draco and its coils shine, unmoving.

“I think I understand, a little bit.” Harry pauses, then begins again, slowly this time, “Since before I was born, most of my life was already laid out for me. There was a prophecy. About someone killing Voldemort.”

Between them, Draco’s left arm burns.

“It could have been either Neville or me - we both qualified. But Voldemort chose me. And from then on, everything about me revolved around him, and the War that was coming. Everything still does, really. I will never be free from it. I’ve never even known that freedom.”

The emotion rising in Draco is so great it's like a dam bursting.

“It used to bother me a lot, but now I’m okay with it. I didn’t see it at the time, but Dumbledore was right. I could’ve still turned away from the prophecy, if I wanted to, but I didn’t. And that was my choice.” Harry takes a deep breath. “There’s one thing, though, that still bothers me.”

Draco waits, but Harry doesn’t say anything more. “Harry?” Draco says, gently taking Harry’s hand. Their fingers interlace, and Harry squeezes.

When he speaks again, his voice is thin and weary. “What bothers me is what the adults in my life did to me. How Snape took out his grudge on an eleven-year-old. How Dumbledore kept everything from me, until it was almost too late. How-” He stops to swallow. “How he gave me over to the Dursleys, knowing who they were. What they were.”

Harry’s hand is warm, so warm, in Draco’s.

“And the Dursley’s, too.” Harry lets out a little chuckle, laced with bitterness. “Maybe Dudley, my cousin, I could forgive, since he was so young, but my aunt and uncle…I just...don’t understand why they would-” He stops.

The Dursley’s. Harry has told Draco a little about them - though obliquely: _I learned to cook from a young age_ , he would say. _I was never allowed this_ and _I’m a bit claustrophobic._ All these clues, Draco has hoarded, and slowly, he has begun to piece together a terrible, terrible image. 

Though Draco knows how trite it is, he says, “I’m sorry,” and squeezes Harry’s hand.

Harry squeezes back, but remains silent. By the light of the stars, Draco sees the pain rising from him like smoke - choking him thick and heavy. 

“Don’t forgive Dudley.”

Harry starts, and turns to look at Draco, his eyes wide. “What?”

“Don’t forgive him.” Draco moves his head closer. “You say he was young, and so he was. But everyone was young once, too, but not everyone was like him.”

“B-but that’s different.”

“How is it different?” Draco presses.

“His parents. The way he was raised - that also played a part.”

“Harry,” Draco says, his voice a scraping whisper, “You were raised that way, too.”

Any argument left in him seems to die in Harry’s throat. He swallows it down, and his eyes bear into Draco’s with such heated intensity that something inside him thaws under the pressure. The melt collects, and drops to the earth.

“You made the same excuse for me,” Draco says. “That I was young.”

Slowly, Harry nods, but says nothing. No longer does he trample through, thinking he can save Draco from himself with the force of his words alone. Now, he waits. And waits. And when he does touch the glass, the fragile petals at his feet, he does so how he touches all of Draco: like something beloved. 

“It’s true, I was young, and influenced by my parents and our society. But that’s no excuse, and I don’t want it to be one for me.” Draco’s gaze is unwavering. “I still had a choice, even if I didn’t think so at the time. I never want the consequences of that choice to be taken from me.”

With his other hand, Harry slowly touches the scarred, twisted flesh of Draco’s left forearm. A reminder - for both of them. 

“When you lied, at the Manor, and didn’t give me away - that was a choice, too,” Harry says, tracing the eyes.

Draco breathes deeply, and nods.

He continues: “That night, on the Tower, when you were going to kill Dumbledore. I was there. What you did-what you didn’t do. That was also a choice.”

He is touching the twisting eight of the body now. Blood pulses loud in Draco’s ears.

“And,” Harry whispers, “The apology you wrote to Hermione, after everything. That was all you.” He presses his thumb into the snake’s yawning maw.

Months ago, Draco would have heard only pity in his voice. But he knows, now, that Harry has always been sincere, and it was Draco who was afraid to listen too deeply.

He opens his mouth. “I don’t know why Snape and Dumbledore and your aunt and uncle did those things to you. If I did, I would tell you. I promise you I would.” Draco closes his eyes. “But I do know that Snape and Dumbledore had to carry the consequences with them for the rest of their lives, and your aunt and uncle will have to do the same.”

“The good and the bad,” Harry whispers.

“The good and the bad,” Draco affirms. 

“You’ve really thought this through.”

Overhead, Draco’s namesake twists on as it always has, but when Draco opens his eyes, he swears it’s changed. The stars that make it what it is - moved. 

“I’ve had a long time to do it.”

They fall asleep like that, on the soft moss that grows between the scales of Glyder Fawr, face to face, holding hands. 

The next morning, they pack up and begin the hike back. An overnight trip was the most they could get away with, considering that they were rapidly approaching summer’s tourism peak, and, worryingly, that the dragon eggs haven’t hatched yet.

Draco tries to push it out of his mind. Amira called on her wife, Julie Khanyile - one of the only licensed dragon veterinarians on the Isles - and she should be arriving today. Her expertise, combined with Amira’s and Draco’s experience, should be enough to ensure all is well with the clutch.

“Look, Draco.” His gaze follows to where Harry is pointing. Through a thicket, it’s where one of the main tributaries in this area should be. “It’s dried out.” 

All that is left is the channel carved into the earth, and the bare rocks beneath. Harry jogs forward and jumps in. A sound rings out - the bottom of his boots clicking against stone. 

He beckons Draco to come, his face joyous like the whistling wind. “Come on! We can get back like this.”

Draco obliges, stepping into the riverbed, feeling the ghost of water flowing over his feet. They follow it downstream for a while, going home.

It’s strange: without the distorting flow, Draco can see the twists and drops of the river more clearly. The piles of gravel, deposited along the sides during slow flow. The twigs and branches piled up, forming natural dams. Dozens of times Draco has walked this stream - washed his hands and face with its bounty - and all this while he didn’t know it at all.

“Draco?” Harry asks, walking in front.

“Yes?”

“I know you said wizards used to fight dragons here, but did any live here?”

Draco cocks his head. “You mean in Snowdonia?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t always a dragon refuge, right?”

He considers this. “You’re right, people used to live here. Mostly likely Muggles - ancestors of the Welsh.”

“Wow…” Harry looks back at Draco, a wide grin on his face, then gestures to the ground they walk on, the grass crowding the riverbank, the goliaths of stone cutting the sky. 

“Isn’t it amazing? That humans have lived here for thousands of years, and now it’s our turn?”

Unchanging and eternal, Draco had thought of Snowdonia. A constant in a world of fickle forces and the vagaries of life. 

But now, when he looks around, he sees through Harry’s eyes: the rock paths worn smooth by both ancient and modern feet, the grass and brush and forests cultivated by unknown hands. The mountains that used to take to the sky. The river down below, and how it ebbs and flows even over the span of a week. 

Harry stops and turns around, brow furrowed and holding his hand out “Are you okay?”

Draco takes his hand, a tender anchor. He opens his mouth and surprises himself, “Yes. Yes, I think so.”

And on they walk, through Snowdonia, the place where everything changes, and everything lasts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there!


	6. SIX

Three weeks later, and Draco jerks awake to a pounding at his door. It pauses for a moment, while Draco struggles to gather his wits, then starts up again.

“Draco! Harry!” A muffled voice calls - Walker, Draco thinks.

Draco touches Harry’s cheek, cool fingers on warm skin. “Harry. Someone’s calling us, love.”

“Mmph?” Harry’s arms, thrown around Draco, tighten and his face pinches.

The pounding at the door continues, and Draco grows more and more certain of the circumstances. “Harry, it’s an emergency, we need to go.”

His eyes fly awake. “Ah?” he says intelligently. “What is it?”

“Harry! Draco! Please wake up!” Walker calls again, sounding more urgent this time.

Draco sits up. 

“I think the clutch is hatching.”

They’ve prepared for this. They knew the call would be coming any time - in the recent week, the once-flawless obsidian surface of each of the five eggs has begun to show small, white cracks. 

Draco takes some of the supplies, and Harry juggles the rest while still trying to change out of his pajamas. When they open the door, it is indeed Walker on the other side, the set of her shoulders tense.

“It’s starting. Prasad and Amira are already there, and Dr. Khanyile is on her way. We should hurry.”

So they hurry, levitating the supplies halfway, then opting to carry them by hand. Though human lives are short, dragon memories live on, and they remember what magic has brought unto their kind. Even bringing out a wand in their presence is enough to scatter them into the sky, soaring and skittish. 

They do keep a light, however, with the help of Harry’s wandless magic. By the glow of his fingertip, and with a few, small apparition jumps, they reach the coast with all the supplies intact.

The shifting grains of sand unsteady their feet, but Draco stubbornly stabilizes himself, huffing a little under the strain. The last brood predates even Amira’s tenure at the Refuge, so the only knowledge they have about the hatching process rests in the detailed records of dragon keepers of decades past. And the one tasked with studying them, and with the delivery, is Draco. 

“There they are!” Prasad whisper-yells from the lip of the nest, the words nearly snatched away by the wind. 

“Set these down here,” Draco instructs Walker and Harry, who obey. Then, he runs up to Prasad. Behind them loom massive shapes: five grown dragons, sitting on their haunches at the edge of the nest, their slitted eyes luminescent and cutting in the heavy dark. In the crater is Amira, preparing the eggs for delivery based on their varying levels of readiness - just according to plan.

“How is it?” Draco asks, breathless.

“Almost,” Prasad confirms, “The mothers are getting restless, I think they hear them scratching the insides. You need to get down there now.”

Draco nods. “Alright. Help me get the supplies.”

With the combined help of Prasad, Walker, and Harry, they manage to move all the supplies to the edge of the nest. From here, however, Draco must move the rest by himself, and he must trade off with Amira to do it. The dragons are already wary of so many wizards in one place - and in such proximity, too. They only trust one at a time to approach the clutch.

It takes some time - time that Draco fears they don’t have - but he does it. Eventually, it’s just him in the center of the crater, eggs as big as his torso scattered at his feet, and everything he should need beside him. 

He sets up several lanterns around him for light, and inspects the eggs. They are close indeed - one or two are showing significant webbing, the film inside showing through the cracks. 

Wizardkind has long played a critical role in the perpetuation of the dragon species. Perhaps in response to the worsening air quality due to the Muggle Industrial Revolution, dragons began laying broods with thicker and thicker shells to protect the embryos inside. However, the eggs eventually reached a thickness that the babies inside are unable to break through - leaving them trapped inside, starving to death.

Their full-grown parents or family members are unable to help, either, as their size and the nature of their claws do not lend themselves to sensitive operations. They cannot help their children hatch, lest they risk crushing the entire egg - baby and all. 

For almost two hundred years now, dragon caretakers across the world have been assisting dragon hatchings, and dragons have learned to accept it. Draco is about to continue the tradition.

Carefully, he draws the egg pick from one of the bags. It’s a slender thing, shaped like a pickaxe, but with one blunt end and one end like a hook. He feels the dragons above track his every movement.

Then, he pulls out several towels - one for each egg - and the water basin, enchanted to retain water and replace it automatically. 

Finally, he takes out the bulk of the supplies: the food. Although dragons are more than capable of hunting for themselves, dragon caretakers prepare a special meal for newborns. The pellets, although unassuming, are packed with essential nutrients, and have proved to be so beneficial that the adult dragons at Snowdonia allow it. And since baby dragons are born with teeth, they can eat it with no problems.

The moon is high but clouded, so the light is but a sliver in the sky. Draco - the constellation - is shrouded. Perhaps it has slithered off the starred dome altogether. 

Draco - the man - pulls on his gloves: his treasured, wickedly useful gift from Harry, and begins to work. He feels almost a dozen pairs of eyes on him, half dragon and half-human, but he refuses to falter. Slowly and methodically, he takes the first into his lap and begins chipping away - holding it between his legs like the notes instructed. Piece by jagged piece, the shell comes apart, and once there is a hole big enough, Draco punctures the sac within, and the baby, along with all the fluid, comes spilling into his arms.

Newborn dragons, Draco quickly learns, are quite ugly. They are pale and bloodless, and the gleaming scales that lend their kind so much awe-inspiring beauty are merely colourless etches in the flesh. 

Draco washes and towels off the baby. Its clawless paws cycle the air, and little mewls escape from its jaws. Through the towel, Draco can feel the nubs on its skull - the beginnings of the lustrous horns that take hundreds, even thousands of years to grow to their full length. When he’s done, he sets it down in front of the food. It snuffles at it, its eyes still wrinkled closed, but dutifully eats the first meal of its little life.

One by one, he goes through the rest of the clutch the same way, until finally, when the fifth baby is drooling over its food, he lets himself fall to the ground, body outstretched and chest heaving. The shards of broken eggs lay around him, like black snow, and the babies stumble through them and sniff at Draco’s head.

The sky above him is lightening - turning from deep black, to purple, to blue. 

A sound, a growl, erupts from one of the adult dragon’s throats. A line of smoke begins trailing from its nostrils. The babies squeal and toddle over, their limbs still awkward, their infantile wings flapping unevenly. Once all five of them gather, the adults take each of them in their mouths by the scruff of their necks. They bow their heads to Draco, unfurl their wings, and take off in unison. The beat of their wings is so powerful that it sends the shell pieces and food pellets scattering, and Draco must press himself to the ground for fear of being blown away.

They rise, and in no time, they are gone: a V heading inland, toward the climbing sun.

“Draco!” The sound of shifting sand, the rustling of clothes. A thump at Draco’s head. Harry Potter leans over him, his eyes like morning rays. “Draco, you did it!” He exclaims.

Prasad and Walker skid down the slope and run over. Amira’s levitating wheelchair flies her down, and Dr. Julie Khanyile follows her wife. They crowd close, smiling and laughing, and don’t flinch for a moment at the stench of birth fluid that has no doubt soaked to Draco’s innermost layer.

“That was excellent work, Draco,” Amira says, warmly.

“They all came out so healthy - I guess we were worried over nothing,” Dr. Khanyile muses.

“I’ve never been so close to that many adults before!” Prasad exclaims, their face open with awe.

Walker holds her partner close, “You were incredible, Draco.”

Harry says little, but he doesn’t have to. The way he looks down at Draco, the way he whispers a word, and a spell gently dries his hair and clothes, is enough.

They clean and pack up, and Draco isn’t allowed to help. So he goes to sit on the beach, pleasantly dry and warmed by the sun at his back - its light turning the dark sea to pale blue. Terns play in the surf, outrunning the tides, and gulls circle and cry across the frothing waves. 

A flock at the corner of Draco’s eye suddenly takes off, and when he looks over, it’s Harry, looking sheepish.

He approaches and takes a seat next to Draco. The latter rests his head on Harry’s shoulder, and they watch the waves and their tumble.

“Happy Birthday, by the way.”

Harry snorts out a laugh. “Wow. I almost forgot. Thank you.”

“Are you going to ask me what I got you?”

“D-draco, you didn’t have to-” Harry begins, but Draco cuts him off:

“Well I did anyway. So ask me, Harry,” he says firmly.

A sigh. But when he speaks, Draco hears the reluctant smile in his voice: “What did you get me?”

“Your friends. They’re coming for a week-long trip today.”

“I-you-”

“Everyone,” Draco continues, feeling pleased with himself, “Weasley, Granger, Longbottom, Lovegood, Thomas, Finnigan. And Ginevra.”

Harry shifts against him in shock. “Ginny?”

“Yes.” Draco closes his eyes. “I know you are still friends.”

“But I thought you-”

“This isn’t about me,” he says, as gently as he can manage. “They’re coming to celebrate _you_.”

Draco feels Harry struggle to find words for a moment, before he settles on a weak: “I didn’t know you were in touch.”

“Yes, well. Longbottom was kind enough to reach out after the trip - the original one. We’ve kept in contact ever since.”

Harry presses a kiss to his temple. His voice warm, he says, “I’m happy for you. And thank you. Thank you for everything. Oh Merlin, this is going to be so fun.”

“You’re welcome,” Draco says, holding Harry tighter. “Of course, you’re welcome.”

They sit, unspeaking, for several moments. Blood thrums in Draco, a rush in his hands and legs. The vial in his pocket - the one he grabbed in the half-dark, hours before - burns. He reaches in, and takes it out.

It’s not a small thing. It carries a weight. The light picks up on it, making the glass shine and the contents pale.

Harry looks down at it, but says nothing. It’s not a secret - Draco keeps it in the open, and he still, occasionally, takes it with him. A few times, he has caught Harry staring, perhaps trying to make sense of it. But he has never asked outright.

“My father died earlier this year,” Draco explains. “This is half of him.”

Harry hesitates, then rests his hand over Draco’s, and the vial. “I’m sorry.”

The seabirds call and call - waiting for an answer. “He wasn’t a good man,” Draco says. “He wasn’t a good man, and he wasn’t a good husband or father, and hardly anyone is sad to see him gone, but-”

The salt stings his eyes and throat.

Harry wraps Draco in tighter, his arms like calm water, and gradually, Draco collects himself. 

“My mother has the rest of him. I haven’t spoken to her in a long time. I don’t-” Draco falters for a moment, but pushes on. “-I don’t know what to say.”

Slowly, Harry traces patterns on Draco’s skin. “I don’t think she knows what to say, either.”

Somehow, the thought settles Draco - that his mother also dreads the empty letters, and dull, careful small talk. That she stares too much at the vial as well, and touches it just to remember what it was like to touch the real thing. That she, too, walks her waking hours and lies unsleeping at night with torment and love warring in her heart. 

“I am going to owl her. Soon,” Draco speaks his promise to the sky.

Harry nods, and presses a kiss to his cheek in affirmation. They sit in companionable silence for several long moments, feeling the sand between their toes and the wind tousling their hair, before Draco speaks again:

“When I go, promise me something.”

“Yes,” Harry says without hesitation. “I promise.”

“Take me here. Spill me everywhere. I don’t want this.” Draco clutches the vial tighter. “I want something different.”

“Of course. Of course I will. Whatever you want,” Harry says, and Draco knows he means every single word.

To their left comes running Prasad and Walker, followed by Amira and Dr. Khanyile. Walker yelps and screams as Prasad grabs at her waist, and the two wade deep into the pulling water. Amira flashes her wife a wicked grin, before rolling herself into the water as well - her enchanted wheelchair taking to the waves easily. Dr. Khanyile laughs and yells, “Wait for-” the rest of her sentence whirled away by the wind.

Harry turns to Draco. His face, like all of him, is memory, yes, but also oracle, prophecy, future truth.

“I’m glad I came back. I just wanted to tell you.”

The cord wraps them both up, now - a hot wire. And it still sings. When Draco presses close, he hears it, rising from Harry’s skin.

“You’ve already told me,” Draco says. 

Oh, the look Harry presses to him. Through his eyes, Draco sees his own reflection - scarcely recognizable - but he doesn’t flinch away.

Harry turns to the horizon, to their friends and their flashing limbs. Above, the clouds part and unveil the sun. 

“Do you want to go?” He asks.

“I don’t know how to swim,” Draco admits.

“Then I’ll teach you.” He stands and shakes off sand in glittering waves. He offers a hand to Draco, smiling. “Come on.”

Briefly, Draco closes his eyes, and imagines it: the stinging grit, the sucking tides. The sun in his eyes. The water, taking him in, and his friends urging him forward. Harry Potter’s voice in his ear. Harry Potter, buoying him. 

Above, the gulls still call, always interrupting, always overlapping - until question and answer bleed into one.

Draco takes Harry’s hand, and lets himself be lifted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End! Thank you so much for reading, it really means a lot. I hope you've enjoyed the story and the characters as much as I have writing them!
> 
> I'm on tumblr: @Inofaro - I will be posting some of my thought processes behind this fic over there in the coming days, so if you're interested in that, check it out! And generally, that is where I post updates on current projects, so give me a follow if you enjoyed this and want to see more.


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